Book in a nutshell: The Immortalists focuses on Charles Lindbergh in the years following his solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927, an act that made him the most famous man in the world. Attempting to save the life of his sister, who had a damaged heart, Lindbergh approached Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon who was developing the science of tissue culture in higher animals. His work began modern cancer research by growing malignant cells and deriving antibodies from them.

Although Lindbergh was unschooled in medicine, he invented a mechanism that kept whole organs alive and without infection for weeks outside the body. It was the dawn of organ transplants, and their success made Carrel and Lindbergh not only close friends, but also believers in human immortality through science.

Carrel believed in eugenics and in nature's command that only the fittest should survive. In his and Lindbergh's mind at the time, "the fittest" meant the European races, a belief that fit with Hitler's vision of Germanic Supermen. Lindbergh's admiration for Hitler changed his fame to infamy, but Friedman details his eventual change of heart.

Best tidbit: Less well known than Lindbergh's "betrayal" of America is his redemption. After President Roosevelt's death, President Truman sent the pilot to the Pacific to test new fighter planes that were having difficulties against the speedy Japanese Zero. Later, he was sent to Germany to help recruit scientists he had known before the hostilities.

At a concentration camp, he saw the reality of Hitler's Germany. That and other events undermined his worship of science as the highest form of morality. Writes Friedman: " 'The final answer' said the man who spent nearly five years in Carrel's laboratory . . . 'will be given not by the discoveries of our science, but by the effect our civilized activities as a whole have upon the quality of our planet's life.' "

Pros: Although the book deals with complex technical, scientific and historical issues, Friedman makes the key events and their ramifications understandable to laymen.

Cons: None.

Final word: With the power of a Greek drama, we follow the rise, fall and redemption of one of the world's most famous men.